Pundits drinking Pope Francis’ Kool-Aid

Pope Francis views on capitalism and the environment don’t deserve the gushing verbal embrace that they have recieved in the Express-News.

Photo: LUIS ACOSTA /AFP / Getty Images

I was surprised by how both an Express-News editorial and St. Mary’s professor Vincent Johnson so uncritically praised the pope’s views on economics and the environment (“Our hope: Give us hell, Pope Francis” and “Pope’s brave embrace of environmentalism inspires,” Sunday).

The editorial said the pope is worried about the poor and “idolatry of money,” and that unfettered markets could lead to “a new tyranny.” It also mentioned that trickle-down theories have “never been confirmed by the facts.” Some facts run counter to the pope’s narrative.

Capitalism may serve the poor well. The poorest 10 percent of the population in the most capitalist countries have incomes about nine times higher than in the least capitalist countries. Life expectancy is much higher while infant mortality is much lower. Child labor rates are much lower, too.

From 1949-1961, as political scientist Charles Murray has pointed out, the poverty rate in the U.S. was cut in half during a time when we had few government programs.

Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation reported in 2011 that 75 percent of poor households had air conditioning while 92 percent had microwave ovens. Once even the rich could not buy them. Capitalism brought products like these to the masses, with constantly increasing ownership rates.

Hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of extreme poverty in China and India as they came to rely more on markets and less on government planning.

Economist Tyler Cowen observed in The New York Times that global inequality fell in the last 20 years, partly due to improvements in China and India. International trade played a big role, too.

The pope also “advocates a thoughtful and reasonably regulated capitalism.”

Our economy is hardly unregulated. In the U.S., we have many environmental rules and an Environmental Protection Agency. We have recycling programs. There is also the Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, standards that mandate each carmaker achieve so many miles per gallon. Regulatory spending by federal agencies is about nine times higher today than it was in 1970, adjusted for inflation. We add thousands of pages of new regulations each year. Yet many regulations are not thoughtful and reasonable.

Electric cars get subsidized. If you buy a Chevy Volt, you can get about $7,500 in tax credits. But, as blogger and journalist Megan McArdle reported, even if we all drove the Volt, U.S. emissions would only go down 3.5 percent. There may also be environmental consequences from mining lithium, which is a component of car batteries.

Environmentalist Bjørn Lomborg has pointed out, “The toughest global warming policy today is the European Union’s commitment to cutting 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. This will cost $235 billion and cut temperatures at the end of the century by a measly 0.1ºF.”

Johnson mentions that the pope is worried about wasting resources. But in 2008, the National Academy of Sciences reported that “Americans use about half as much energy per dollar of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as they did in 1970.” We are less wasteful than we used to be.

Johnson stressed the importance of the environment more than the editorial. The EPA has reported that between 1980-2013, emissions of six principal air pollutants dropped by 62 percent. So there has been some good environmental news.

The pope seems either unwilling to acknowledge the benefits of capitalism and some environmental improvements over the last few decades or he is unaware of them. Whatever the case, his views should be viewed more critically.

Cyril Morong, Ph.D., is an associate professor of economics at San Antonio College.